Federal Housing Minister Gregor Robertson says Ottawa’s Build Canada Homes agency has received about 450 proposals for affordable housing projects, but provinces must put more money into transitional and supportive housing — and the health and employment supports that go with it — to move people off the street.
Happy, with one big exception
The federal housing minister says he wants to see the provinces step up their support to get people off the street and into long-term homes. In an interview with The Canadian Press, Gregor Robertson said he’s generally happy with provincial and municipal support for Ottawa’s bid to ramp up affordable housing construction and double the pace of homebuilding across the country.
Build Canada Homes — the federal government’s new agency, launched in September to scale up affordable, non-market housing — has so far received about 450 proposals from provinces, cities and private-sector developers to build new affordable housing projects.
“I’m really encouraged right out of the gate because the need is so high in almost all provinces and territories,” Robertson said. “They are certainly stepping up in general, and there’s room for more activity.”
The shortfall: housing that comes with help
The exception is homelessness. Build Canada Homes’ initial funding was set at $13 billion. In September, Ottawa set aside $1 billion of that to construct transitional or supportive housing — short-term accommodation meant to bridge people from the shelter system into a more permanent home.
That money came with a condition: provinces and other partners were expected to co-invest in matching employment and health supports for people who are homeless or at risk of being homeless. So far, Robertson said, that co-investment has lagged.
“I, in particular, need to see support from provinces for supportive housing, transitional housing that helps people off the street and out of shelters into stable housing,” he said.
The reason is built into how the programs divide up. Ottawa can pay to build the units, but the services that make transitional housing work — nursing, mental-health and addictions care, employment counselling — are delivered and funded by provinces. The agency’s own leadership has made the same point in parliamentary testimony: the success of the transitional housing fund depends on other orders of government being at the table with wraparound services, and conversations with the provinces are ongoing.
Two kinds of housing, two kinds of money
The distinction matters. Transitional housing is time-limited: a bed and a door that locks, for months rather than years, meant to stabilize someone leaving a shelter or the street. Supportive housing is permanent, but comes with on-site staff — health workers, counsellors, case managers — for tenants whose needs are more complex.
Bricks and mortar alone deliver neither outcome. A transitional unit without health and employment supports risks returning its tenant to a shelter the day the stay ends, which is why the $1-billion fund was designed so federal construction dollars unlock only alongside provincial operating money. It is also why Robertson’s pitch was aimed at the premiers rather than at builders: the developers have already shown up, with 450 proposals in hand. The missing partner, in Ottawa’s telling, is provincial treasuries.
A timely audience
Robertson’s comments landed as Canada’s premiers gathered in Ottawa for their winter meeting, ahead of a first ministers’ meeting with Prime Minister Mark Carney on Thursday — putting his audience for the pitch in the same city, at the same time.
On the municipal side, the minister said he has been encouraged by the many cities across Canada moving ahead with zoning reforms that allow builders to put four units on a lot by default — the as-of-right “fourplex” changes Ottawa has pushed as a condition of its housing funding deals with municipalities.
